Kaji
by Incanto
Summary: A serial arsonist interrupts the team's vacation in Kyoto, Japan. Is this an ordinary firebug, or is something far more sinister in play?


AN: _This is an indirect sequel to my earlier fic, _Electric Ladyland_, but you DON'T need to have read it! Only four things you need to know._ **Previously, on Criminal Minds**: _1) The team, minus JJ, was invited to Tokyo to solve a case. 2) Reid, but no one else, picked up some functional Japanese. 3) Their contact was Captain Hajime Sasaki of the Tokyo Metropolitan police. 4) When they solved the case, Sasaki treated them to an all-expenses-paid vacation in Kyoto, where JJ joined them. But of course, where detectives go, crime has a way of following..._

_To spare you looking it up, the title just means "structure fire." I'm not talking about that dude from Evangelion._

_Enjoy!_

_-Incanto_

* * *

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: "There is a battle being fought for the soul of mankind, and the battleground is beauty."

* * *

When the man had finished his milk tea, he looked up, brushed his lips against a white handkerchief, and rang the small bell that stood at one corner of the tea tray. The butler entered.

The very high-ceilinged room was appointed in a Western style, with ripe bunches of purple curtains on either side of its single window, and an eerily reflective marble floor. The butler wore Western livery, black and white like the checked floor tiles. His shoes clicked. He bent at the waist to retrieve the tray, each movement like an automaton's, and inclined his head: Would Sir be so kind as to follow?

The guest couldn't remember if the butler was mute, or if the code of the household simply forbade unnecessary speech. In any case he stretched his arms, yawned, braced two fingers against the tabletop, and got to his feet. Before walking after the butler, he spared a glance out the window. It was early fall and a warm, nice-smelling breeze oozed through the inch-wide gap over the sill. Chestnut trees lazily shook their heads of yellow leaves.

The butler opened a side door on one wall, between two bookshelves. Just tall enough to accommodate an average-sized man, it was half the height of the grand double doors leading into the parlor. He ducked through and the guest followed.

The small room beyond had probably once been a walk-in closet, but its walls had been painted a hard, perfect white, and it contained nothing but a small lacquered table, without chairs. On the table stood a game board, covered with smooth, perfectly round, black and white stones. On either side of it, two wooden boxes contained more of these stones.

The butler bowed deeply and retreated backwards, closing the door in front of him.

The guest considered the Go board. Groups of white stones nearly encircled the black, but here and there black crept through, broke out, ate away at the boundary lines like fire. The guest clicked his tongue.

_Careless_. As always, his opponent was too much the gentleman. The dilettante. More curious to see his rival's strategy unfold than in winning himself. Five turns ago, the guest had made a bold move. Rather than strengthening his position elsewhere, and waiting to see what developed, his host responded. Could he _really_ be doing what he seemed to be doing? The host's curiosity demanded satisfaction.

The guest slid his fingers into the box of black stones, relishing the slippery feeling as it engulfed them. He shut his eyes. The negative image of the board blazed momentarily in the darkness. Then his thumb and forefinger emerged, holding a single black stone with great care and purpose.

* * *

"Wait _up_!"

In despair, JJ let her shopping bags drop to the pavement and stood there, knees touching, sweat trickling down her slender face and neck. From Reid's perspective further up the hill, she looked rather touchingly like some little sister unable to keep up with her brother. He grinned. A week's travel in sunny weather had faintly tanned the young analyst's skin, and he looked robust in a kaki shirt and jean shorts, a heavy camera slung on a bandolier over his shoulder. The breeze touched his hair. Then they both laughed, a bit amused, but mainly happy.

"Anyway," she went on, tugging on her shirt collar, "call me a rickshaw-wallah or something to help lug these bags up there? It's not my fault the garment district is between the hotel and this stupid temple of yours."

"You're thinking of India. Although the term rickshaw is Japanese in origin-_rikisha_, man-powered car." He batted his eyelids helpfully.

"Thanks, I'll remember that for the next pub quiz." She gathered the bags, took a deep breath, and climbed the eight steps to where Reid stood; then she glanced around skeptically. "Are you _sure_ this is the shortcut?"

"JJ? Please, trust the tour guide with the eidetic memory. You don't want to fight your way through a million tourists and souvenir shops."

"Well, all I've seen so far is a bunch of dead people."

A stone wall rose to the right of the path. On the other side a huge, terraced cemetery had been carved into the hillside. Some the graves were old and ornate, others simple modern slabs of rock; some were flanked with sticks representing members of a family. Gently burning incense stood in front of some, dying flowers, or cans of coffee or liquor in front of others. Somehow without being told, JJ would have known it was a cemetery. The density of the graves and, without understanding the writing, their anonymity, reminded her of the soldier's field in Arlington.

"Come on!" Reid set off again.

Although JJ had flown to Kyoto, the ancient Imperial capitol of Japan, expressly to vacation, it was Reid who had read the guidebook cover-to-cover on the two-hour bullet train ride from Tokyo, and probably discovered little he didn't already know. He'd been playing tour guide since day one, and JJ suspected she found herself alone with him on this trip to Kiyomizu Temple because the others had learned to avoid him.

When they arrived, it was worth the climb.

"Oh…Reid! This is incredible!"

"Why do you sound surprised?" Reid asked, faintly peeved. "I told you so, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but you say that about everything."

"It's Kyoto! Everything _is_ incredible!"

The city of Kyoto was a wide, flat basin surrounded by hills, and Kiyomizu stood halfway up one such hill, crouched amid heavy trees, the forest eating away at its foundations. At first glance, its thatched roofs and plain woodwork blended into the half-dead, early fall foliage, but somehow the age of the buildings was clear; they gave off a calm dignity. The crowds were sparse in the early morning, and JJ wandered freely, craning her neck, breathing the sweet air, and tuning out Reid's voice as he rambled on: "…constructed in seven hundred seventy eight, common era, but most of these buildings actually date to the Tokugawa period when…"

The buildings loomed over them, likewise oblivious to Reid's words.

They skirted a pond where lotus flowers were beginning to emerge from the muck. Reid pointed upwards. Above their heads, a balcony was supported on an impressive-looking bulwark of ancient timbers.

"The Great Stage of Kiyomizu," he said, almost proud, as if he'd built it himself. Then he lifted his camera and the shutter flashed.

Her arms crossed, JJ smirked. "Care to explain?"

"Oh." Reid sounded innocent. "You got kind of quiet, so I assumed I was boring you. I thought I'd let you enjoy the place in peace and quiet."

"Well, Mister Tour Guide, it so happens I _would_ like to hear the story of the Great Stage of Kiyomizu."

"It's…not that big a deal. In Medieval times, the legend was that if you jumped off the stage and survived, the gods would grant your wish."

JJ whistled. "That thing must be thirty feet high."

"Jumps during the Edo period had a recorded eighty-five percent survival rate. The practice is forbidden now."

"That's a shame."

"JJ! I'm shocked. You've got little Henry to think of."

"Well, come on Reid, we're talking free wishes here. I could pay off Henry's college tuition twenty years in advance…eighty-five percent, I _like_ those odds…."

* * *

Minutes later, atop the Great Stage of Kiyomizu, JJ licked a vanilla ice cream while Reid awkwardly pried sweet _dango_ dumplings off a stick with his teeth. The sky overhead was perfectly blue, and disturbed only briefly as a large crow floated by. Aside from the quiet Japanese conversation of the few other tourists, and a spring gurgling somewhere nearby, its call was the only sound. JJ sighed and leaned on the railing.

"Kind of hard to believe Kyoto's so…I mean…this is what I imagined it'd be like. Not _that_."

The city laid out beneath them, lacking the skyscrapers of Tokyo, was a mundane collection of black, brown and white boxes, interrupted only occasionally by the startling roof of a giant temple. The ancient and modern appeared to exist uneasily side-by-side.

"You just have to know where to look," said Reid, put the _dango_ stick conscientiously in his pocket, and brought up his camera again.

He stopped. JJ regarded him bemusedly as he stood there, mouth slightly open, finger on the shutter.

"Spence? You okay?"

Still looking straight ahead, and without loosing the strap from his neck, he handed the camera to her.

"It's zoomed all the way in," he said. "Take a look in front of you at about a forty-degree angle."

He didn't need to be so specific. She spotted it right away, and caught her breath. "Oh my God." A thin, angry plume of dark gray smoke was rising straight up in the air. "That's no one-alarm electrical fire. Something's burning up real good. The hotel's not over there, is it?"

Reid dug out his smartphone. "I'm going to see if this is on the news…"

Vacationing or not, and even without legal jurisdiction, his mind transitioned instantly to the professional.

"I'll call everyone, make sure they're all right…" muttered JJ. Then belatedly, to reassure herself: "It's probably not that big a deal."

Using the web TV app on his phone, Reid quickly found a local news channel. The flames that suddenly filled the screen gave an uncanny effect, as if the phone were a powerful telescope giving an eagles' eye view of what was now taking place only a few miles away.

"JJ," he called, urgent-she put down her phone. "Take a look."

Lurching, queazy-cam coverage of the burning building from across the street. Flecks of black ash filled the air like bats. And in the middle of the street, struggling with a grown policeman many times her size, a little girl in a pink sweater threw herself toward the flames over and over again. JJ covered her mouth with one hand.

The girl's shrieks were audible: "_To-chan wa…To-chan orun ya_!" When the policeman finally grappled her with both arms she screamed in his face: "_Kare, uchi no to-chan korosh'tan nen_!"

"What's she saying?" JJ breathed.

"_My father is in there_," Reid translated, face expressionless. "_He killed my father_."


End file.
